After a huge 3-2 victory against the Dallas Stars, the Blackhawks unfortunately were unable to get any goals past Jesper Wallstedt when they hosted the Minnesota Wild on Sunday, April 7th. They had been shutout 4-0, it was the 13th time this season they were shutout. Arvid Soderblom made a total of 33 saves for Chicago, and in Wallstedt’s first NHL win, he made 24 saves for Minnesota. The Blackhawks go back on the road to play against the St. Louis Blues on Wednesday before returning to the United Center to play two at home, both against the Nashville Predators and the Carolina Hurricanes.
Wild lineup against the Blackhawks:
Kaprizov – Eriksson Ek – Boldy
Johansson – Rossi – Zuccarello
Gaudreau – Khusnutdinov – Hartman
Shaw – Lucchini
Middleton – Faber
Brodin – Bogosian
Merrill – Chisholm
Mermis
Wallstedt
Gustavsson
Blackhawks lineup against the Wild:
Bedard – Dickinson – Kurashev
Foligno – Johnson – Anderson
Reichel – Athanasiou – Blackwell
Slaggert – Entwistle – Donato
Vlasic – Jones
Korchinski – Megna
Kaiser – Zaitsev
Soderblom
Mrazek
Early into the second at 18:54, Kirill Kaprizov began the scoring with his 40th goal of the season. He shot from the right face-off dot on a power play off Matt Boldy’s cross-ice pass. This had been the third straight season where he’s reached the 40-goal mark. Marco Rossi made it a 2-0 lead for Minnesota at 7:29 when he received a pass at the bottom of the right circle from Mats Zuccarello to put a snap shot past Arvid Soderblom. Rossi’s goal marked his 21st goal of the season. With 1:32 remaining in the middle frame, Frederik Gaudreau tipped in a shot that came from the right point by Zach Bogosian for the 3-0 lead.
Kirill Kaprizov struck his second of the game and his 41st of the season at 11:51 of the final frame. He had scored off a drop pass by Brock Faber, who recorded his 36th assist of the season, for the 4-0 final. This had been Jesper Wallstedt’s second NHL game, who made his debut on January 10th, winning his first NHL game on a high note.
Colin Blackwell on the loss, how they played, and Arvid Soderblom: “There’s no real excuse. They had a back-to-back too and they had some travel. I thought there were some spurts in the game where we had some extended offensive zone time, but they did a good job of eliminating the second and third opportunities. On the contrary, they did a good job at kind of hemming us in. Ultimately, it comes back, including myself like puck management – I didn’t think we did a good job with managing the puck in certain situations. They played a faster game than us,” – “I feel for ‘Sodie’. He’s played really well for us the last however many games here now, and I feel like we’re not giving him the run support or anything along those lines. But he made some huge saves for us, and that could have been a lot worse. So, kudos to him. I thought he stood on his head for a lot of the saves he made and kept it manageable for a little while there. But ultimately, you can’t have that effort, especially on a back-to-back.”
Jaycob Megna on the 4-0 loss: “There wasn’t a lot of life out there. It was a lot different from last night where I thought we battled really hard. Tonight we just couldn’t get anything going,” – “Obviously, that was a big one yesterday, but we got to come back today, show up to work, and do our job. Just not enough guys pulling in the right direction, things go wrong and they tend to go sideways pretty quick. We need to work together to have success and stick together for 60 minutes, it just didn’t happen tonight.”
Notes:
– Andreas Athanasiou led the Blackhawks at the faceoff dot, winning eight of his 10 draws (80%)… his highest mark of this season.
– It had been the fourth time this season, as well as the third time in the past five games where Wyatt Kaiser hit the 20-minute mark. On Sunday, he logged 20:34 of ice time.
– Nikita Zaitsev made a return to the lineup after missing three games since suffering an injury against the Ottawa Senators on March 28th.
– Kirill Kaprizov recorded two goals and an assist (89 points; 41 goals, 48 assists)
– Jesper Wallstedt is the second goaltender to get his first shutout in two appearances or fewer for the Minnesota Wild (Josh Harding, two games in the 2005-06 season)
– Scoring his 21st goal, Marco Rossi is six shy of tying Kirill Kaprizov (27 in the 2020-21 season) for the most goals in a season by a Minnesota Wild rookie.
